


Among Airlocks and Murder-Plants

by holbytlanna



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Among Ash-Heaps and Millionaires, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Potential claustrophobia warning, Suspense, airlock, just in case, yes I borrowed the title from Gatsby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:20:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23914456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holbytlanna/pseuds/holbytlanna
Summary: Alien plants can be dangerous aboard the Enterprise, and Chekov is running out of time. And oxygen.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sotto Voce](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1007346) by [sinestrated](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinestrated/pseuds/sinestrated). 



> A long time ago, I read a good fic, and then I lost it. I couldn’t find it anywhere, so I got mad and rewrote it. I have since found it, it’s sinestrated’s Sotto Voce. The story I rewrote is Part 4, Chekov’s chapter. I hope it is different enough to be considered my own work (sinestrated’s story is Spirk, also, and I changed that because I personally don’t ship it).   
> I do not own Star Trek, and most of the plot belongs to sinestrated. I own the two **very** minor characters Lieutenant Willowbourne and Nurse Edricks.   
> I am by no means a scientist, but I did quite a bit of research while writing this, so hopefully it is at least believable.  
> Also, I have a Russian co-worker with a gorgeous accent, and from talking with her I have realised that Chekov's accent has always been wrong. So I attempted to write a more accurate accent. I hope it's intelligible, if not, feel free to tell me!  
> Questions, comments, concerns, rude remarks? Please let me know, I welcome commentary!

The “Anna Is Petty and Can’t Find A Fic She Lost and So Is Rewriting It” Story

or

My Dear Lad Pavel Accidentally Panicked and Shut Himself In A Vacuum-Sealed Room

_It’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic_ , Pavel thought, continuing to measure his breathing as best he could. It didn’t really matter, though. It had been half an hour, and already he was feeling short of breath, and there was an ache behind his eyes signalling an oncoming headache. Ninety minutes, Doctor McCoy had said. Or less. 

Pavel could do nothing in the tiny room — closet, really — but wait as his life ticked away, minute by minute, breath by breath, and watch as the room spun before his eyes.

———————

He had been analysing a particularly interesting botanical sample from the surface of Gnyria-IV. A science team led by Hikaru had, of course, already looked at it and sent the information to the computer, but Pavel was curious about it.

On its planet, the vivid purple plant would release spores, which would travel airborne and take root. While the plant itself was not toxic, inside the spores was a powerful cardiac glycoside, likely fatal to humans. Which is why, when a spore pod burst open, Pavel panicked.

What he should have done was run out the door of the otherwise-empty lab, and close it behind him. Initiate the airlock — all isolated-study labs could be sealed in such a way — and alert Mr. Spock. Maybe preemptively head to Medbay, make sure the toxin hadn’t taken effect in his body already. The Science department would wait until the spores had died. Hikaru had estimated it would take 20 hours, in a sterile environment. Then deep clean the lab. No problems, no worries, minimal danger.

But no. Pavel panicked. And he did what was probably one of the worst things he could have done: he sealed the lab door, and sealed himself into the alcove room. Basically a closet, it held a few spare Science-blues and an extra case of empty hypos.

When his breathing slowed, he stood and looked out the small view-window. He could see the spores settling, like dust, on the tables and floor. He’d just have to wait the spores out. 20 hours. He’d get hungry, but it was doable. Better than facing unknown plant-based toxins. The spores couldn’t get to him from inside the closet, he had successfully sealed it—

_Shit._

He had initiated the airlock. The vacuum seal would make sure that no spores got in. But neither could any air.

On the verge of panicking again, Pavel forced himself to slow his breathing, measure it because each breath now was precious. He had no idea how much air he had, how much he had already used up.

He reached for the little console that pulled out of the wall. Every doorway had one on both sides. Very lucky. The door would not open, not from the inside, now that the airlock had been engaged. Pavel was about to code around the security measures, but hesitated. He had no idea what the spores would do to him. Hikaru’s explanation of the toxin — a cardiac glycoside — had left Pavel with little more information than “it will most likely kill you.”

He grumbled to himself in Russian, caught between a rock and a hard place. This was just the sort of fix he expected himself to get into. _Idiot_. 

So Pavel wired the computer console into a makeshift-communicator. Something the Captain has taught him while on an Away Mission Gone Wrong. Pavel had never thought he’d need the skill again, but he was grateful for it when the Captain’s voice filled the tiny room.

“Kirk here. This wouldn’t have anything to do with the airlock engaged in one of the labs?”

“Yes, Captain. I’m afraid it does,” Pavel replied. “I haff locked sse lab down, sse toxin is contained. But…”

“But you’re in there, Ensign?”

Pavel swallowed. Was his chest feeling tighter already, or was he just afraid? “Not exactly, Captain. I am… in sse alcoffe. But I panicked, and sealed myself in. I do not know if I vas infected by sse spores, but I am ffacuum-sealed in here, eisser vay.”

Pavel heard muffled cursing on the other end. It seemed Mr. Scott had been on the Bridge and had heard Pavel’s report. Pavel’s suspicion was confirmed when Mr. Scott’s voice was the next to patch through the console-communicator.

“Whaddaya mean yeh sealed yourself in there, lad!?” In the background, Pavel heard the Captain calling Doctor McCoy up to the Bridge.

“I panicked. I couldn’t ssink. I’m sorry.” Pavel was trying not to panic again, trying not to breathe too hard. “I don’t know how much air I haff in here, or if I can risk offerriding security and opening sse lock.”

He barely heard Mr. Spock’s muffled voice: “If I may speak to him, Mr. Scott?” The calm voice came through clearer when he had the communicator. “Mr. Chekov, the report on the plant and its toxin that Mr. Sulu filed indicates that you would most likely not survive opening the airlock.”

“Yeah, but he won’t last long in a vacuum seal, either,” drawled McCoy as he came onto the Bridge. “How long you been in there, kid?”

“About seffen minutes.”

“Mm. And how big are those closets?”

“Umm…” Pavel looked around him, trying to judge the width. “About ssree feet vide, four deep. Six feet tall.” Only inches above his head...

Pavel could practically hear the wheels turning in the Bridge Crew’s heads as they ping-ponged figures quietly. After about a minute, McCoy’s voice came back through the communicator.

“Kid, you’re looking at about ninety minutes. Maybe less. You can expand that time for us a little bit by not holding your breath, not moving too much, and keeping talking to a minimum. We’ll figure out a way to get you out of there, but I don’t know what exactly those spores would do to you. I’d rather not take that chance if I can help it.”

 _Ninety minutes_. Ninety minutes of oxygen left. An hour and a half left to live. Of all the ways one could go out while a member of Starfleet, Pavel was going to suffocate.

———————

As McCoy told the boy his fate, a hush fell over the Bridge. Uhura muffled a sob. Jim looked stricken. McCoy had to clear his throat before continuing into the communicator.

“We’ll do everything we can, kid. Hang tight, we’ll find a way.”

A soft “Aye, sir” threaded through, and McCoy dropped the connection, turning to look at Jim. 

The young Captain had regained his composure somewhat after McCoy’s words to Chekov. He had a mission now — to get the boy out of the lab-alcove alive. That mission snapped his mind back into action.

“Command Crew, all of you, with me. Lieutenant Willowbourne, take the conn,” Jim barked, standing and striding quickly to the turbolift.

They followed him to the little office in his quarters, anxious and hardly daring to hope that Jim had a plan. The door whooshed closed behind them. 

“Sulu, is there any way for Chekov to cross that room and not get infected?” Jim asked, throwing himself down into a chair.

“Not with what he has with him. Maybe he could do it okay with an oxygen mask. Best with an Environmental Suit. But there’s nothing like that in that closet. A few spare uniforms and a case of hypos won’t help him. No one should go in there, even with a mask or an EV Suit. It’s too risky. And I don’t know of a way to force the toxin to neutralise, short of waiting the 20 hour detox period.”

“He doesn’t have 20 hours!” Uhura said sharply. She turned to Scotty. “Is there a way to beam him out of there?”

Scotty looked pained. “Not with the airlock on. I can’t beam enna-thin’ in or out of a sealed room like tha’.”

Spock interjected. “Can that safety measure be overridden in this instance?” 

“I’s not protocol, it’s quantum physics. I canna beam him out o’ there unless he releases the vacuum seal—” 

“Which he shouldn’t do,” Sulu muttered with his head in his hands.

“—Which ‘ee shouldn’ do.”

“It seems to me,” Spock said, “that the choice is this: certain death from remaining in an airtight room, or possible death—” 

“Likely death. Highly likely. We don’t know that that specific toxin does to humans,” McCoy cut in.

“All the same,” Spock continued, “Mr. Chekov has a higher chance of survival facing the toxin than remaining stationary.”

“Guys, you’re ignoring the obvious,” Jim said suddenly. “Can we get him more air? Pump more oxygen into that closet?”

“No, Captain. There would be no more room for it, the room is sealed. Adding more oxygen would only increase the pressure in the room.”

“And it isn’t more oxygen he needs,” McCoy said.

Jim looked at him funny. “What are you saying? He’s going to suffocate, Bones — die from lack of oxygen.”

“No, Jim, that’s not what’s happening. Lack of oxygen isn’t going to be what kills him. It’ll be Hypercapnia. Too much CO2. The ship’s atmosphere is, what, Scotty, 20% oxygen?”

“Thereabouts. Same as Earth’s.”

“Then he’s already breathing in too much CO2. It's getting into his bloodstream, instead of the oxygen he needs, and that’s also causing his blood to acidify. He’ll die when the CO2 levels in that room get around 8%. That’s in about an hour, now.”

“Roughly fifty minutes, Doctor,” Spock said quietly.

“We’re just talking in circles and it isn’t doing Pavel any good!” Sulu cried suddenly. 

“What do you suggest we do, Lieutenant?” Jim snapped.

Sulu, to his credit, stood his ground as Jim pulled rank in his frustration. “I don’t know what to do! I don't know what we can do! I just—” Sulu cut himself off, looking to the ceiling and blinking rapidly. 

Jim sighed. “I’m sorry, Sulu. We’re going to do everything we can. We won’t let him go without a fight. Bones, comm him again, I want to know how he’s holding up.”

———————

Pavel jumped as the noise of the console-communicator filled the tiny closet, yanking him out of his internal mantra of _stupid, stupid, **stupid** Pavel _.

“Chekov here.”

Doctor McCoy’s gruff voice patched in. “Hey kid. How’re you feelin’?”

Pavel relayed the shortness of breath, headache and mild chest pain. “...and I’m dizzy. I don’t ssink ssat’s good. Haff you got any options for me yet?”

The Doctor sighed. “Not yet. We can’t beam you out or get more air to you, and you have no way to get through that glycoside unharmed.”

Pavel closed his eyes as the room started spinning again. “It’s okay.”

“Repeat?” the Captain’s voice ordered.

Rallying strength to his voice, Pavel said again, “It’s okay. If you can’t fix ssis. Sse toxin didn’t get out to infect sse ship. Ssat vas my goal….”

“No!” Nyota and Hikaru yelled, at the same time the Captain said softly, urgently, “And our goal is to find a way to see you to drinking age. I will get you out of there, Pavel.”

Pavel’s breath was coming a little easier, but the headache thumped painfully against his temples. His Captain’s words sent a glow through his body, but it was dulled by the throbbing, and the constant monologue of _failure, idiot, useless, moron_ running rampant through his head.

“I haff forty minutes left, Captain. Maybe.” He didn't think right then was a good time to have a discussion about underage drinking, or the vodka stashed in his locker. Or the tremors that had started in his hands.

“None of that!” Doctor McCoy gruffed. “Talking is bad for you, we’ll have none of it—”

“Pavel, I’m sorry!” Hikaru cried out suddenly, startling Pavel — and from the sound of it, the rest of the Command Crew as well. “I shouldn’t have left that plant in the lab, I should have returned it to Gnyria as soon as I was done with it, I—”

“Stop ssat,” Pavel said, as firmly as he could. “Ssis is my fault, I vasn’t ssinking clearly. Don’t any of you dare blame yourselffes…” He trailed off as the blurry room lurched violently before his eyes. He closed them tightly; the chest-pain returned. “I’m okay,” he lied.

———————

The Command Crew could hear the young man’s laboured breathing as he muttered “I’m okay.”

 _Brave kid_ , McCoy thought. _Lying to make us feel better about this_.

They continued to ping ideas around, each more impossible than the last. McCoy kept the comm line open, and checked on the kid every few minutes. Keep him conscious, keep him alive.

But Chekov was beginning to sound drowsy, and his breathing was worse. He was dying on them.

Finally, Jim stood up. “Bones, it’s been too long. He’s got ten minutes. I’m going to do something.”

They all exclaimed variations of “What are you doing, Captain?” and even Chekov said sleepily, “Nyet, Kapitan…”

Jim snatched the communicator from Bones. “Chekov, listen to me. You stay put, stay awake. You hear? I’ve got a plan. You’ll be out of there in no time.”

“Jim, what the hell are you doing?!” McCoy yelled as the madman walked briskly out of the room. 

———————

Pavel was glad the console didn’t have a viewscreen. He didn’t want his friends to see this, they shouldn’t have to watch him die.

The headache roared through his brain now, and he could barely see. Everything spun and blurred. He was huddled in a tight ball on his side on the cramped floor; he curled around his chest that ached with the effort to breathe. He was so sleepy. A part of him knew that if he fell asleep, he would never wake up, but his eyelids were so heavy.....

The Captain’s voice through the console barely managed to recall him to lucidity.

“Pavel, you there? Hear me?”

“Mmm.” He was slipping again, every breath an effort. 

“Listen, there's no way to get to you without someone going through all those spores…”

“I…” Speaking Standard was proving difficult. His mind was sluggish, the words slipping away from him. “I understand… Captain…”

With the last exhale, Pavel’s eyes closed, and he lost his grip on consciousness. He was gone before he could hear Kirk’s voice through the communicator.

“—So don’t beat yourself up too much over this. You’re worth it.”


	2. Chapter 2

Kirk sprinted to Science. Every second now was precious. He barreled through officers when they didn’t see him coming or move out of the way fast enough. He got several odd looks and more than a few exclamations, but he didn’t have time to stop and apologise. 

He nabbed an oxygen mask from where it hung on the wall, not even breaking his stride. It was a puny thing that would cover the nose and mouth and filter the surrounding air into oxygen. It was half-charged. It would have to do.

He made it to the locked-down lab, raising the communicator — Bones’ communicator, Kirk would have realized if he had been paying attention — and frantically trying to code around the airlock.

“Pavel, you there? Hear me?”

A barely-audible murmur of acknowledgement told him that Chekov was holding on by a thread. He’d have to hurry. 

“Listen, there’s no way to get to you without someone going through all those spores…” _Oh, Bones is gonna_ _murder_ _me after he saves my life…_

“I… I understand… Captain…” The firewall was down, ready for the airlock to release on Kirk’s command, and Chekov’s words sent an ache through Kirk’s heart. Did Chekov really think that Kirk would leave him to die? That he was an acceptable casualty? Kirk’s heart broke, knowing the boy was going to hate what he was about to do almost as much as Bones would.

“So don’t beat yourself up too much over this. You’re worth it,” he finished into the comm, hoping Chekov could still hear him.

And with that, Kirk plunged into the lab, and the door sealed behind him. As it closed, he heard Bones running up behind him, calling out to him. _Sorry, Bones. It’s the only way._ He ran through the lab to the sealed alcove, spores kicking up with every step. Kirk had never coded around firewalls faster than that day, hoping desperately that it was fast enough.

The door opened with a gust of stale air, and Kirk’s heart just about stopped. His youngest officer lay facing the door. He was curled into a tiny ball, just barely fitting in the small closet that Kirk had to stoop to enter. His eyes were closed and he didn’t move. Maybe not even to breathe.

“No no no no no,” Kirk muttered, snapping the oxygen mask over the boy’s pale face. As he did so, Kirk was acutely aware of his own heart pounding irregularly. He lifted the deadweight Navigator, and almost fell over as the room spun about him.

“Damn, this stuff acts fast…” he grumbled as he trudged to the door. He could see Bones and Spock outside. Bones looked worried and ready to commit murder.

The airlock disengaged as Kirk approached the door. He almost missed the doorway completely — something was wrong with his depth perception. 

The airlock shut tightly behind him as he lowered Chekov onto a waiting stretcher. _Good ol’ Bones, having a med team here._ Kirk promptly collapsed into his trusty CMO’s arms, dizzy and exhausted.

“You absolute idiot. I’m going to kill you.”

Kirk waved him off. “Save the kid first. Then you can do what you like to me.”

———————

Not minutes after Jim’s heroic idiocy, McCoy found himself barking orders at his med team. Jim had started to seize, and Chekov was going into respiratory arrest from the dangerous levels of CO2 in his body.

McCoy hated when he had too many patients to supervise them all. It was worse when he cared about each of them.

“Get the boy on a ventilator, stick him in the decompression chamber. Start with double pressure. Christine, supervise.”

He barely heard the “Aye, sir”s behind him as he whirled to assess Jim. 

Spock was already attempting to synthesise an antidote — he had more than half the damn Science crew working on it. There was nothing McCoy could do to speed that up. He just had to keep Jim alive long enough for them to save him.

Which was going to be really difficult considering Jim had the self-preservation instincts of a mayfly and the immune system of an infant. 

McCoy jammed a strong sedative hypo against Jim’s neck, with probably undue violence. As Jim’s body went limp, the seizing slowed. The biobed reading was frightening: heartbeat dangerously irregular — even though his body was at rest — spasms in nearly every major muscle group, rising temperature, and no sign of stabilisation or improvement. And to top it all off, Jim was having an allergic reaction to the toxin.

_Dammit Jim, you idiot. How did you expect me to fix this?_

The sedative did practically nothing. Didn’t slow the toxin’s effects or neutralise any symptoms. So McCoy administered fever-reducers and tried an antihistamine for the allergic reaction. As he waited for them to take effect, he commed Spock in Science.

“How we looking on that antidote? He’s not doing so hot.”

“The toxin is similar to those on Earth found in the Foxglove plant and others of the genus Digitalis. Treatment should be similar—”

“Atropine!” a young nurse interrupted, blushing as McCoy turned to stare at him. “Sorry, sir. But my brother ate some Foxglove once as a kid. They gave him Atropine.”

McCoy looked the young man over. He couldn’t have been any older than Jim, and he looked terrified of his snappish CMO, but anxious to help save his Captain. 

“Won’t do any good, ‘m afraid. Captain’s allergic to it, along with just about every other medicine known to sentient life.”

The young man hung his head. “Sorry, sir.”

 _Jeez, I’m not that scary, am I?_ “S’alright. Not your fault. Why don’t you assist Nurse Chapel with the decompression chamber?”

“Aye, sir.”

McCoy reopened the comm line to Spock. “I’ll try an anti-digoxin, but if you could find a specific antidote, I’d like that better.”

“We are working with all speed, Doctor.”

“Good.” The comm dropped, and McCoy dug around for an anti-digoxin hypo that Jim wasn’t allergic to. After he administered it though — more gently this time — all he could really do was watch and wait.

———————

Christine Chapel, all through her medical training and even now in her job as one of the chief nurses on the Federation flagship, had difficulty detaching medical case and sentient being from one another in her mind. The bodies in surgery had names as well as conditions that needed treatment. 

She was a more-than-capable nurse, but this failure to compartmentalise sometimes took an emotional toll on her. Especially now, when the youngest crewman was failing to breathe on his own, and the breathing tube wasn’t giving him enough oxygen.

She slipped the entire gurney, ventilator and all, into the decompression chamber. 

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy was hardly a new technique, and was therefore effective to have lasted centuries, but it still hurt Christine to see the small body in yet another small, sealed space. _If he develops claustrophobia, I’m letting Leonard do the psych evals for it,_ she thought.

She flooded the chamber with oxygen, and doubled the pressure inside. Chekov lay still, though Christine could see his chest rise and fall as the oxygen made its way into his body. 

A young male nurse came by, and seemed about to speak, when he saw that Christine had things well in hand. He started to shuffle off.

Christine knew that look. And the feeling that went with it. Uselessness. Being one too many cook in the kitchen. Unnecessary.

“Edricks?”

The young man turned. “Yes, Nurse Chapel?”

She smiled softly at him. “Can you give me a second opinion on something? Doctor McCoy said to start the pressure in the HBOT at double, and now I’m considering moving it to triple, now that it’s been a few minutes and the patient seems to be stabilising. Do you think it’s necessary?” _Give him something to do, someone to help. Give his opinion value._

He inspected Ensign Chekov’s bio-readings, and then looked through the glass at the unconscious body. “He’s beginning to breathe on his own, heart function slightly decreased, but the Respiratory Acidosis is mending… ribs and lungs holding out well on double… hmm. He’s still unconscious. Do you expect him to wake up?” He turned to look up at her. 

“No, though he may. He isn’t sedated.”

Nurse Edricks shook his head slowly. “He lost consciousness in a small, sealed room. I don’t think it would be a good idea for him to wake up in one. Triple pressure would have him in there for less time, getting him more oxygen in his blood. I would advise you raise it.”

 _Good_. He was confident enough not to offer any deference. That’s all Christine wanted to do — restore his confidence. 

She smiled. “Thank you, Nurse Edricks.” As she tapped the controls to do just that, she said, softly, “You know not to read too much into Doctor McCoy’s grouching, right? He’s just like that, especially when it’s Captain Kirk that’s hurt. He’s stressed. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Edricks exhaled, a barely-noticeable sigh of relief, and Christine knew she had hit the nail on the head. Hopefully, with her words of comfort and confidence, Edricks would feel up to coming back to work tomorrow and be able to face the bear-like CMO. She knew that sometimes, before she had been able to see the care underneath Leonard’s grumbling, she hadn’t wanted to come to work to face him either.

“Thank you, Nurse Chapel,” He said with a smile, as the Medbay clock pinged the hour. 20:00. Shift rotation, for all Medbay staff that weren’t actively busy. “If you’ve got this in hand, I think I’ll take my off-shift…”

“Yes, I can hold this fort down. Go ahead.”

He left with considerably more bounce in his step than there had been previously. 

Christine smiled. This was what she loved to do. Heal people, physically and emotionally. She was very good at her job — it was no surprise that she was Medbay’s second-in-command.

———————

Science was working as never before to find an antidote. Well, that wasn’t exactly true, McCoy knew. This sort of thing happened far too often for his liking. 

All the same, they were working their asses off trying to save their heroic, moronic Captain. Meanwhile, the cardiogram reading showed Jim’s heart beating far too fast and far too irregularly. Chekov had gone out of McCoy’s mind completely. Luckily, Jim’s seizing had stopped as the fever-reducers took effect. 

There were no sentient natives on Gnyria-IV to ask about the plant, and no previously-documented case of Starfleet exposure to this specific toxin. The Science team was at square one for antidote testing. Which meant exposing an animal subject — a Tribble, in this case — to a small amount of the toxin and harvesting any antibodies it came up with. 

The Tribble died. 

It was nearly an hour before Science came up with anything conclusive, and by that time, McCoy was at his wits’ end. He had been reduced to treating Jim’s symptoms, and he couldn’t even do that very effectively. The fever spiked again, which triggered more seizing. The allergic reaction closed his airway for a terrible few minutes. The erratic heartbeat stopped for far too long before McCoy could start it up again. 

But finally, Spock came nearly-running to Medbay with an antidote. It had been successful on blood-cultures and even a Tribble. 

"It’s as good as we’re getting,” McCoy said softly to Spock as he prepped a hypo. 

_Please_.

As he jammed it against the back of Jim’s neck, the heartbeat slowed. The seizing stopped. It took maybe ten minutes for Jim’s entire body to relax and return to a normal, sleep-like state.

It had worked. _Dear God, it had worked._

———————

The boy’s readings continued to improve. Pressure in the chamber was stable at 90 In Hg, three times ship-standard, and his body was holding up to the pressure just fine. He remained unconscious as his body breathed in pure oxygen, repairing the damage the CO2 excess had done.

Finally, after a little more than an hour, his blood-oxygenation levels were normal. Christine eased the pressure in the chamber down to 60 In Hg, and then to standard pressure, 30 In Hg.

The loud hiss the decompression chamber’s door made as it unsealed and opened startled Leonard, who was sitting across the quiet Medbay at the Captain’s bedside.

“Blood oxygen and pH levels normal, Leonard,” Christine said softly as the hissing noise died down.

“Good,” he said as he walked over. The two of them took the gurney out of the decompression chamber and moved the still-sleeping boy to a biobed.

Readings were good. Oxygen had been restored, and Chekov’s body had already begun recovering the damage caused by the suffocation. They took the ventilator out: he was breathing fine on his own now.

It was another few hours before Chekov woke up. He and the Captain had a steady stream of visitors, even though it was nearly 22:00 hours. Christine and Leonard had to repeatedly convince Lieutenant Sulu that neither the Captain nor Chekov would blame him for what happened. Uhura read aloud softly to the two of them, while Spock hovered nearby, talking with Leonard about Kirk’s condition and the antidote. Mr. Scott didn’t visit, but a few young Engineering Ensigns nearly got their heads bitten off for interrupting his experiments on vacuum-seal beaming.

Christine stayed in Medbay long after her shift ended. In addition to the Captain and Navigator, a Lieutenant Junior Grade was laid up with a broken leg from an Engineering accident. Bone regeneration took a while, but at 23:45, the girl was able to walk out of Medbay on medical leave for the next day.

She began to feel again the ache behind her eyes, calling her to sleep. She made sure the night-shift nurses had the nearly-empty Medbay well in hand, quietly made Spock promise to convince Leonard and the others to get some rest when they could, and then she went to her own bed. Her patients were stable, her work day was done.


End file.
